Jesus’s lament comes in a covenantal context, a context in which he is the messianic Son chosen by Yahweh to deliver his people Israel by suffering on their behalf. God pours out his wrath on Jesus, yes, but as his anointed Son who suffers in his people’s place. Further, if we consider the other crucifixion scenes where different portions of Psalm 22 are either quoted or alluded to (e.g., Matt. 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; John 19), we see that they record various ways Jesus fulfills this psalm, pointing us back to the point that Jesus likely had the whole psalm in mind.

“The Father Turned His Face Away”?

The crucifixion is a good case study in showing how a careful Trinitarian framework can help work through thorny issues related to the Trinity and salvation. Not only does it bring to the surface the difficult question of what the Father was “doing” (or not doing) while Jesus hung on the cross, but it also raises the question of the Spirit’s seeming absence during the event.

When Jesus quotes Psalm 22 on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34), what does this mean? Thomas McCall helpfully frames the issue surrounding this “cry of dereliction”:

Such a question surely comes from someone who has been unfaithful—and who now blames God for their abandonment. . . . But this question, of course, does not come from someone who has been unfaithful. It does not come from a pious person who simply isn’t theologically astute enough to know better. It comes from the lips of none other than Jesus Christ. It comes from the one who has been utterly faithful. It comes from the one of whom the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). It comes from the one who is the eternal Logos (John 1:1), the second person of the Trinity. So these words ring out like a thunderbolt.1

Did the Father turn his face away? Put another way, was there some sort of break or rupture between the persons of the Trinity on that fateful day on Golgotha? These answers require carefully handling the biblical text and retrieving sound theological method from the early church. Unfortunately, though a beautiful hymn, lyrics from “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” have perhaps shaped our view of this verse as much as or more than the biblical text and Christian history.

In popular Christianity, lyrics such as those found in this contemporary hymn are often taken to confirm what many already suspect about the cross, that it is a moment of separation between the Father and the Son. The cry of dereliction in such songs is Jesus’s cry of abandonment, meant to communicate an existential angst, a torment of soul rooted in some kind of spiritual distance between the incarnate Son and his heavenly Father due to the latter’s wrath being poured out. To say it a bit differently, many view the cross as a moment in which the Father pours out his personal wrath on the Son, and this is felt by the Son at a spiritual level and communicated via the cry of dereliction. Let’s briefly work through the issues with the ultimate goal of understanding the unity and distinction in the Godhead. Three considerations help us.

First, there is a Trinitarian consideration: anything we say about the cry of dereliction needs to retain the oneness of the Godhead, both with respect to rejecting any ontological or relational division between Father and Son and with respect to affirming inseparable operations. The cross does not produce division between Father and Son, and it is not only the Father who acts in the crucifixion. It is appropriate to talk about the Father pouring out his wrath, but according to the doctrine of appropriations, ascribing an action to one person of the Trinity does not deny that the other persons are acting inseparably. It is not only the Father that pours out wrath; the Son and the Spirit, as the other two persons of the one God, also pour out the one wrath of the one God. It is, after all, God’s wrath against sin spoken of all throughout Scripture.

On the other hand, we also remember that the Father sent the Son; he did not send himself. The Spirit was active in the incarnation at conception but did not himself put on flesh. So we need to dispel any notions of other Trinitarian persons dying on the cross. This helps us avoid the ancient heresy of patripassianism—the teaching that the Father himself became incarnate and suffered on the cross. Moreover, since we know that God is immutable and incapable of change (Mal. 3:6; Heb. 13:8), it would certainly jeopardize fundamental affirmations about the doctrine of God to assert that the cross initiated a complete three-day (or even a one-millisecond) loss of Trinitarian relations.

One Person, Two Natures

Second, there is a Christological consideration: anything we say about the cry of dereliction needs to retain the oneness of the person of Jesus Christ. He is one person with two natures, divine and human, and he goes to the cross as one person. He is not half God and half man, but rather fully God and fully man. 

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